"An alpha version of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux operating systems was released on 11/17/2008 and is available for download. This offers easier, native installation on 64-bit Linux distributions and removes the need for 32-bit emulation." The pre-release can be downloaded from Adobe Lab Downloads.

should read something like "Adobe resleases Alpha/Pre release 64 bit version of flash for linux"

adobe's flash suport with linux has been bad in the past (10 has been pretty good though so far). given past history though, installing anything labled Alpha that has to do with flash and linux just sounds like extra work and heart ache.

If you want a flash plugin for firefox 3 that: (1) is FOSS, (2) works with most sites, including Youtube, and (3) works natively in 64-bit versions, then Gnash is perhaps the FOSS alternative to Adobe that may suit you.

The truth is in the middle with Gnash. I'm on FreeBSD/AMD64 so I have no choice. I was surprised how well Gnash works lately the 0.8.4 release works on some youtube videos (it doesn't support h.264 yet) and most other youtube-likes. It still has problems with complicated actionscript sites but it crashes a lot less (less than Flash 9 did for me in linux).

Warren Togami made a very good and interesting point over in the comments at LWN.net. It's still better to run plugins under NSPluginWrapper in order to benefit from running the plugin code in a separate process, as it should be. Ever since Netscape, and its successors, made the technically questionable decision of plugging alien code right into the browser, crashes due to plugin problems have been something we've just expected and lived with. (I used to cringe, as a sort of conditioned response, every time I saw a java applet initializing on a page.) We Linux users cannot yet run Google Chrome. But at least us 64 bit Linux users have enjoyed one of its greatest advantages for some time now.

To be fair, there's not a whole lot of incentive for people to go 64-bit on the Windows browser plugins. The 32-bit IE running in Wow64 seems to run well enough and we don't exactly promote the use of the 64-bit IE although it does exist in the install.

Quite the opposite here. I don't have Linux applications resource demanding enough to make use of even 3.2 GB (I never underestimate Firefox though) so I don't see the point in 64 bit. Maybe for cache like in Vista.

Before I start, I wish to explain why I think Flash is still important to a 64-bit Linux user. Personally, I think Flash should be replaced by AJAX or some other open standard. But unfortunately, a lot of websites use Flash. While Google Video and YouTube has a ton of inane videos, it is an immeasurable resource for those who want access to music. This is especially true for those who want to listen to very rare music from countries where copyright laws are not really enforced. A lot of other good websites provide their content in Flash, like www.democracynow.org. Until Flash is replaced by an open standard, many of us are stuck with using Flash.

Thankfully a lot of distributions have made it easy to install the 32-bit libraries needed for Flash. Debian provides most 32-bit libraries in a single package. Unfortunately for those who do not use a mainstream distribution, this is not one simple task. It requires rebuilding an entire toolchain for 32-bit, then recompiling dozens of libraries. Just setting up a cross-compiler is no simple trick. I have built my 64-bit Linux system using the Linux From Scratch book. I have spent countless hours trying to get 32-bit compiling working for the sole purpose of using Flash. I finally gave up, and I'm glad I did now that Adobe will support 64-bit Flash.

So far, Flash works quite well with most websites. The only issue I ran into is when I right click on a video and choose "Settings...", the dialog will not dispose when clicking "Close."

I would also highly recommend installing Flash Blocker, which prevents a lot of annoying advertisements from being loaded.

I'd rather see swf, and AS3 become standards (they mostly are), and then have the official Flash Player's Source opened up (much of it already is).

I actually think Adobe eventually will do that, for most of it. They have been paying attention to Open source, and studying hard, and have a track record of being able to do valid market analysis. They do have licensed some bits (font engine, codecs, etc.), so they'd have to purchase those bits to open them, and that may not really be feasible. With much more of the source available than currently is (and some build infrastructure Adobe - no one wants to touch Tamarin if it isn't being used for anything), I could easily see a project like Iced Tea cropping up, that would simply use Adobe's code base, and graft in parts of SwfDec, Gnash (or both), freetype, etc. to fill in the gaps.